….. and so, this is our final blog from Japan.
Since last updating everyone we have flown to Okinawa Island (which is approx 2 hours south of the mainland and 5/6 degrees warmer), been across to Zamami Island and spent the last 4 days in Fukuoka (with the sakura/cherry blossom) viewing the amazing cherry blossom, as it’s now fully out.
It has been interesting to see a different side to Japan – with Okinawa having a tropical climate, meaning the attire was togs and tee shirts.. Okinawa City itself is a relatively modern city, compared to the temples/shrines in Kyoto. Most of this was due the impact of WW2 and the loss of historic building. Saying that we still went to Zakimi Castle, and viewed the Shurijo Temple – or tried to, but unfortunately in burnt down in 2019, so instead we helped crush some rocks that would be used in supporting the rebuild. For some strange reason we were the only non Japanese doing it, but we didn’t mind, and the helpers really enjoyed us being there.
We also decided to take a 2 hour ferry across to the Kerama Islands, staying on Zakimi Island. We spent 5 very peaceful days on the island that only has one road, and probably about 20 cars (plus 3 buses), with one of the main ‘draw cards’ being you can swim with turtles – in actual fact Alan managed to spend a few hours ‘turtle hunting’ walking in the shallows up to his chest to take some amazing pictures and videos (without a snorkel and mask!!).
Finally we went to our departure point of Fukuoka for 4 days. Yes we were back on the path of seeing shrines. We also took a train out to Kido Nanzoi-mae to continue our viewing of Buddha’s. There we saw a 42 metre reclining Buddha at Nanzoin Temple and of course we’ve been seeing the sakura in full blossom at a range of Temples and parks – including Tochoji Temple, Nishi Park, Ohori Park, Terumo Jinja-dori Shrine and Maizuru Park (both seeing the blossom during the day and night).
The night show was absolutely amazing, and it was enhanced ny having a completely clear night sky.
As mentioned this update is our last from Japan, as we now fly to Hanoi in Vietnam. It has also been exactly 100 days since we left New Zealand, meaning we are just over 20% of the way through our travels – for those of you following our blog you will note that we have changed platforms and access to our new site (home page) through the following url kiwiscanfly.net – note that Alan is still building, updating and transferring our old updates across to the new site.
